Michael Fish: 'It wasn't me – the French were to blame'

Twenty years on from the Great Storm of October 1987, Michael Fish looks back on the defining moment of his career. Neil Tweedie battens down the hatches

Michael Fish is sick of banging his head against a brick wall. He's been doing it for 20 years now: thud, thud, thud, trying to put the record straight about the Great Storm of 1987. But it never seems to do any good. You can see it still gets to him.

"It is very irritating indeed, because I had nothing to do with it whatsoever," he says, betraying not the merest hint of humour on the subject.

"But that's the press – never let facts get in the way of a good story."

For ever more, Michael Fish will be the man who nonchalantly dismissed the most destructive storm in recent British history with the words:

"Apparently a lady rang the BBC and said she heard that there was a hurricane on the way. Well, don't worry, if you're watching, there isn't."

The clip has been aired time and time and time again, whenever some producer or other wants to illustrate complacency in the face of impending disaster. For a professional forecaster, it must be the equivalent of being filmed as your trousers fall down while stepping forward for investiture at Buckingham Palace – a humiliation from which no shred of dignity can be salvaged.

But Britain's longest-serving television weather man hasn't given up all hope of clearing his name. Not quite.

He and fellow BBC weathermen Ian McCaskill and Paul Hudson have brought out a book to coincide with the 20th anniversary of that great, tree-toppling tempest. Entitled Storm Force, it catalogues extreme weather events in the UK since the early 18th century. And, ominously, it warns of more to come as global warming takes hold, resulting in a much more volatile climate.

Fish uses the introduction to set the record straight on the events of October 15-16, 1987.

He is, he says, the victim of dodgy editing just as the Queen was when a BBC team cut footage to make it appear she had stomped off from a photograph session:

"The newspapers were told quite categorically in 1987, then on the 10th anniversary in 1997 and again now that the remarks I made referred to Florida, and were edited and taken out of context. Bill Giles was the duty weatherman that night. I wasn't involved in the slightest."

Fish's shift ended earlier in the day. While at work, he was approached by a colleague whose mother was about to go on holiday to Florida. The man asked for Fish's advice about a hurricane said to be heading towards the state. Fish was able to put his mind at rest and the man phoned his mother to tell her she should go ahead.

"There was no phone call from a female viewer," he explains.

"I just switched it round because I knew it was a disciplinary offence for a member of staff to use the phone. I mentioned it because the news bulletin prior to the forecast I gave was talking about a hurricane affecting Florida. If footage of the last item in that news bulletin still existed it would show that I was linking to it by dismissing the threat to Florida – which turned out to be accurate. The remark had nothing to do with the weather in the UK."

So why doesn't the BBC show the bulletin and the forecast to put matters right?

"The tape of me is not a BBC tape. I don't know where it's come from. The BBC did not keep a copy in those days. It's from some private VHS and is not complete."

In fact, says Fish, he did a good job during his shift, which ended 18 hours before the roofs started lifting.

"The forecast I gave that morning, which was again craftily omitted by the press, started with the warning: 'Batten down the hatches, there's some extremely stormy weather on the way.' Now if that isn't a good forecast, I don't know what is."

None the less, the Met Office failed to predict the intensity of the storm, which included gusts of 100mph.

"It was much worse than expected, but you are never going to stick your neck out and forecast a record."

Whose fault was that?

"Bill Giles was on duty just before the storm broke. He said nothing about the winds whatsoever, and concentrated on the rain because there had been flooding. I think he made a passing remark, something along the lines of 'and it's going to be breezy up the Channel'. So as far as wrong forecasting was concerned, he was the one not me – because at least I was concentrating on the wind."

So it was the dastardly Bill Giles then. Breezy up the Channel indeed.

"It wasn't Bill's fault either. Forecasts are done by a computer in the Met Office and overseen by a chief forecaster. There was a big problem because of a strike by meteorologists in France, resulting in no data from the Bay of Biscay, where the storm developed. So the computer didn't have the data it needed."

The French! Of course, the bloody French. Sending their horrible weather up to Blighty with not even the barest warning.

But, as Fish knows, there are two realities: the world's and Fleet Street's.

"One newspaper carried an interview with the woman who 'made' the phone call about the hurricane. The person was named and photographed. The paper ran it as an exclusive. Well, of course it was exclusive because the person did not exist."

Amazing, isn't it?

"Having dealt with the press for many years, it isn't amazing. The Burns Night storm of 1990 was worse than 1987 – more people died – but the coverage was nowhere near as great because it was accurately forecast and, presumably, no Fleet Street editor had a tree in his garden at that time."

But enough of the great storm in a teacup, how did he get started on telly, back in 1974?

"In the Ministry of Defence you are volunteered for things, and the Met Office was part of the Ministry of Defence. Bert Foord and Graham Parker were promoted and TV was considered beneath them. I happened to be at the London Weather Centre at the time and they said: 'You'll do. Go along to the studio, stand in front of a camera and get on with it.'?"

The rest is history and terrible ties. Fish has a huge collection of fish-themed ties stretching back to the kippers of his early days on TV and was duly voted Britain's worst-dressed man. But then, in the fashion car crash that was the 1970s, he had a lot of competition. Anyway, he received a much nicer award later, an MBE.

Did he enjoy celebrity? A punk girl band, Rachel and Nicki, released a song in 1985 entitled I Wish, I Wish He Was Like Michael Fish. He has also been described as a "national treasure".

"No, not really, it's not in my upbringing. I'm a staid and stuffy government scientist, not programmed for publicity. Fame is something you're not prepared for, there's no training for that. It's an annoying side effect of the job."

Fish is recognised everywhere because of his BBC satellite broadcasts. When in India he was stopped by adoring fans. He'd rather have more money than fame though things are bit better now he's retired from the Met Office and is employed by BBC South East.

Would it matter if weather went the way of news and professional presenters were used instead of meteorologists?

"It would matter a great deal, because if you haven't got a trained meteorologist looking at the data and updating it you are going to have more incorrect forecasts. We can change 30 seconds before going on air."

Now, at 63, he'd like to do a bit more travelling. He's got his house in west London, where he lives with his wife, Susan (his two daughters have grown up and fled the nest) – and, thanks to forward thinking, it's on high ground.

"When I bought my house 30 years ago, I did look at the map. We were aware of the dangers of global warming, such as rising sea level, then. Global warming – or rather the greenhouse effect – was first written about in 1896. Meteorologists were warning about it at least 40 years ago, but governments took no notice.

"A lot of trends are already showing themselves: winters are milder and wetter and windier, and the summers are drier and hotter. The exceptional heatwave a few years ago that killed a lot of people in France will, in coming decades, be regarded as cool."

It's a gloomy prediction and one Fish would, I suspect, be more than happy to be proved wrong on.